Some Degrees Are Worth the Drive: The Brandywine Battlefield Degree

Unique Masonic Degrees Worth Traveling For, No. 1

There are Masonic degrees you attend because they are on the calendar.

Then there are degrees you remember where you parked.

The Brandywine Battlefield Degree is one of those.

No marble hall. No perfectly controlled room temperature. No familiar drive to the same Lodge building you have made a hundred times.

Instead, you find yourself in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, standing on ground where nearly 30,000 soldiers collided on September 11, 1777, in what Brandywine Battlefield Park describes as the largest single-day engagement of the American Revolution. The fighting spread across roughly ten square miles of southeastern Pennsylvania countryside.

Then, 250 years later, Freemasons will gather there again.

Not to reenact the battle.

To make a Mason.

That is the kind of story Traveling Ashlar was built to chase.

September 11, 1777

You can read about the Battle of Brandywine in a history book and understand the basic facts.

George Washington was attempting to stop General Sir William Howe and the British Army from reaching Philadelphia, then the seat of the American government.

Howe outmaneuvered Washington.

A large British column moved north, crossed the Brandywine at less-defended fords and struck the American right flank. The Continental Army fought hard but eventually withdrew. The British victory cleared the way toward Philadelphia, which they occupied later that month.

Those are the facts.

Standing there is different.

That is something history books have trouble doing.

The landscape around Chadds Ford is still beautiful. Rolling hills. Stone houses. Trees that have no concern whatsoever for what happened beneath them almost two and a half centuries ago.

It is almost too peaceful.

Then you start thinking about the scale of what happened.

Thousands of men moving through fields and narrow roads. Smoke hanging over farmland. Conflicting reports reaching Washington. Troops trying to reposition while Howe’s maneuver unfolded. Men who had probably spent the previous night wondering what breakfast would look like suddenly finding themselves in one of the largest battles of the Revolution.

History gets very human when you are standing on top of it.

Washington Was Here

For a Freemason, there is another layer to the story.

George Washington had already been a Mason for more than two decades when he commanded the Continental Army at Brandywine. His Masonic life is exceptionally well documented, beginning with his initiation into Fredericksburg Lodge in Virginia in 1752.

The park also preserves the Benjamin Ring House, believed to have served as Washington’s headquarters around the battle. Nearby is the Gideon Gilpin House, associated with the young Marquis de Lafayette.

Brandywine was Lafayette’s first major battle in America.

He was shot in the leg during the fighting and continued trying to rally American troops before eventually withdrawing with them. Washington later made sure his young French general was cared for by his own surgeon.

Lafayette would go on to become one of the most recognizable figures of the Revolution.

But on September 11, 1777, none of that ending had been written yet.

He was simply a young man bleeding on a Pennsylvania battlefield.

That is part of what makes Brandywine fascinating.

We know what came afterward.

They did not.

Then Kennett Lodge No. 475 Did Something Different

A Lodge room gives ritual structure.

A battlefield gives it context.

The Brandywine Battlefield Degree, hosted by the Brothers of Kennett Lodge No. 475 in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, takes Pennsylvania Freemasonry outside the walls of the Lodge and places it directly into that history.

The degree has been held on the historic battlefield grounds for years. A documented 2018 conferral brought Brothers to Brandywine for Pennsylvania’s Entered Apprentice Degree, with officers and ritualists appearing in period dress.

The event continued in later years, including a 2025 Battlefield Degree presented by Kennett Lodge No. 475.

The idea has been closely associated with Brother Eric T. Downs, Past Master of Kennett Lodge No. 475 and a longtime supporter of Brandywine Battlefield. Today he serves as Right Worshipful Junior Grand Warden of the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania and as Vice President of the Board of Directors for Brandywine Battlefield Park Associates.

It is exactly the sort of Masonic event I think more Brothers should experience.

Because Masonry does not have to become more complicated to become more memorable.

Sometimes you just need to change where you are standing.

September 11, 2027

This is where the story gets really interesting.

The Battle of Brandywine took place on September 11, 1777.

The upcoming 250th anniversary is September 11, 2027.

And the Brandywine Battlefield Degree is slated to return on that same date, hosted once again by Kennett Lodge No. 475.

Two hundred and fifty years.

Same date.

Same ground.

A new Brother beginning his Masonic journey.

There are plenty of commemorative events surrounding America250.

There will be speeches. Plaques. Ceremonies. Reenactments. Special editions of just about everything imaginable.

But this is different.

A man will enter Freemasonry on the ground where Washington’s army fought 250 years earlier.

You cannot manufacture that.

You cannot move it to another weekend and have quite the same thing.

Some dates matter.

Some places matter.

Occasionally, they line up.

What Makes a Battlefield Degree Different?

Freemasonry already understands the power of place.

We build Lodge rooms deliberately.

We arrange them deliberately.

We move through them deliberately.

The physical environment is part of the experience.

Take the same ritual and place it somewhere historically significant and you suddenly notice things differently.

The sound of the evening.

The temperature.

The trees beyond the gathering.

The ground under your shoes.

The realization that the people who occupied that landscape before you were wrestling with their own questions of duty, loyalty, courage and sacrifice.

The ritual has not changed.

Your perspective has.

That is why unique Masonic degrees are worth traveling for.

• Cave Degrees.
• Quarry Degrees.
• Outdoor Degrees.
• Railroad Degrees.
• Battlefield Degrees.

They remind us that Freemasonry was never meant to become something experienced exclusively in the same chair on the same Tuesday night every month.

Visit another Lodge.

Meet Brothers you do not know.

See how another jurisdiction works.

Eat whatever they put on the plate.

Buy the ridiculous commemorative pin.

Stay too late talking afterward.

Go home with a story.

That is traveling Masonry.

This Is What Traveling Ashlar Means

The name Traveling Ashlar was never supposed to be about another Masonic shirt sitting in a drawer.

The shirt is the excuse.

The story is the point.

Everywhere you travel in Freemasonry, somebody has a story worth preserving.

Sometimes it is a Lodge that has met for 200 years.

Sometimes it is a degree performed underground.

Sometimes it is an old Masonic Temple surviving in a town where almost everything around it has changed.

Sometimes it is a group of Brothers taking the Entered Apprentice Degree out onto a Revolutionary War battlefield.

We want to find those places.

Wear them.

Share them.

Then hopefully convince a few Brothers to get in the car and see them for themselves.

A Better Kind of Masonic Gift

Search for Masonic gifts or Freemason gifts online and you will find no shortage of things with a Square and Compasses attached to them.

Some are great.

Some probably needed one more person in the room willing to say, “Maybe not.”

But I think the best gifts for Freemasons have something more behind them.

A story.

A place.

A Brother.

An experience.

That is what makes a Masonic shirt from an event like the Brandywine Battlefield Degree different from another piece of generic Freemason apparel.

Someone can ask:

“What’s Brandywine?”

Now you have something to talk about.

You can tell them about Washington.

You can tell them about Lafayette.

You can tell them about Kennett Lodge No. 475.

You can tell them that Brothers have been gathering on the battlefield to confer a Pennsylvania Masonic degree.

Maybe you were there.

Maybe that conversation convinces another Brother to go in 2027.

That is a better souvenir.

That is also a better Masonic gift.

Put Brandywine on Your Masonic Travel List

The 250th anniversary of the Battle of Brandywine will receive plenty of attention in 2027. Public commemorations are already being planned throughout the battlefield area for the anniversary weekend.

For Freemasons, there is an additional reason to come to southeastern Pennsylvania.

Come for the Battlefield Degree.

Come a little early.

Walk the grounds.

Look at the terrain.

Visit the historic houses.

Think about what happened there before highways, subdivisions and convenience stores made the landscape feel ordinary.

Then stay for the degree.

Not because you need another Masonic event on your calendar.

Because every once in a while, Masonry gives us the chance to connect ritual, Brotherhood, travel and history in one place.

When it does, go.

September 11, 2027

Brandywine Battlefield.
Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania.
Kennett Lodge No. 475.
250 years later.

If you are a Freemason who has been looking for an excuse to travel to a degree outside your own Lodge, this is a pretty good one.

I’ll see you on the road.

Wear. Share. Travel.

Traveling Ashlar
travelingashlar.com